Known as but Spirit,76 as but thought All Soul, all Mind, whate'er we see, That thought his very life would see, For those that have indeed the Passion, In aspiration far and high, Ardent all in Poetry, And in mighty vision too, That illumes the soaring view, Thought of power that theirs may be (81) "I see the Divinity in reason as in enthusiasm; if I cannot allow man to be deprived of any of his faculties, it is because they are all scarce sufficient for his comprehension of the truths, revealed to him as much by mental reflection as by heartfelt instinct."-Corinne. (82) The general view here implied may be commented upon by the following quotations, in order: "Of this comparative inferiority in the writers of the last century, the chief reason is to be sought in their habits of education, and of study. If some of them, like Milton, thought For them the thought the deep and high; it necessary to season and prepare their minds with all generous science and all seemly arts; yet was their knowledge more general than profound; diffused, but not deep; nor, like that of their forefathers, drawn from its original sources, but caught up hastily from systems; not the mature fruit and enduring result of their own studies, but without substance, traditional and derived. It is not such knowledge, however, which will either enlarge the faculties, or furnish the mind for any great enterprise; which will sustain either the necessary waste of invention, or teach the powers to expand. There is a dissipation of mind too, differing very widely from that enviable diffusion of thought, which can attend at once to the little and the great; there is a dissipation of mind, an unsteadiness and volatility of spirit, consequent on a number of studies easily mastered and irregularly pursued, which is very hostile to that patience of inquiry, that unyielding perseverance and intensity of thought, requisite for all great undertakings. Similar must have been the consequence of too frequent an intercourse with detached and desultory speculations, such as were and are those of our many periodical writers. Such were not however those toilsome researches, that comprehensive and well connected course of studies, especially theological studies, by which our forefathers distended, as it were, all their capacities of thought, and filled out all their conceptions; in which, as in a palæstra, they exercised their minds unto patience, and brought those more tumultuous passions into subjection, which are the veriest enemies to prolonged labour. Such was not indeed that obsolete severity of education, that manly discipline, by which our ancestors were trained up and inured to those hardy exploits of the pen, whereby they still live preeminent above their posterity." A Comparative Estimate of the English Literature of the seventeenth and eighteenth Theirs that strongly think within What for themselves they know to win, centuries. By Richard Burdon, Oriel College: 1814. Oxford English Prize Essays, vol. III, p. 90; Oxf. 1830. "He had done what he knew to be necessarily previous to poetical excellence; he had made himself acquainted with seemly arts and affairs, his comprehension was enlarged by various knowledge, and his memory stored with intellectual treasures. He was skilful in many languages, and had by reading and composition attained the full mastery of his own." Johnson's Life of Milton; Works, Lond. 1820, vol. IX, p. 113. "Which he is constrained to explain in a note by a more exact measure of longitude.' It had better become Dryden's learning and genius to have laboured science into poetry, and have shewn, by explaining longitude, that verse did not refuse the ideas of philosophy." Johnson's Life of Dryden, vol. IX, 397. The above passage from one of the Oxford Prize Essays might be compared with another of those elegant compositions, in which *the following occurs :-" deep learning checks inter 66 * In the same Essay, Mr. Vaughan, stating, or rather mentioning, the two theories of pneumatology, and affirming that the "sensual," which he had defined in his own terms, "where consistently and boldly carried out has broken away all moral obligation," proceeds to identify that materialism with general diffusion of knowledge" Indeed, the sensual school of philosophy might, without violence, be entitled the philosophy of general knowledge: it springs from it by a consequence almost necessary. For all knowledge of facts as first conveyed to the mind consists of ideas collected from external sources; but the mind, in exercising itself upon these, by acts of comparison and generalization, throws around them ideas and abstractions of its own, of which no account can be given, but that they are native to the intelligence which contains them. If therefore the individual has gathered facts slowly, and has by continued reflection assimilated them to his own mind, an analysis of its phenomena will speedily detect elements of thought with which outward impressions have no connection. But if, on the other hand, the mind have passed eagerly from subject to subject, seizing and Till it they all achieve, and see The master-spirit high and free, change of thought here each man has been straining after objects dim to the popular gaze; and when by long usage the image stands forth clear and ascertained to his own sight, he will call in vain upon others to share his prospect; he will seem rather to have created than discerned." The Effects of a National Taste for general and diffusive reading. By Henry Halford Vaughan, Fellow of Oriel: 1836. Oxf. Engl. Prize Essays, vol. V, p. 257; Oxf. 1836. Montaigne expresses his opinion of the speechlessness of what is here called "deep learning" in rather severe terms; and it seems to have been generally understood that, at least in matters committing to memory with all possible rapidity, and allowing but scanty time for the understanding to take them up and inform them, what patience and penetration will it exact, to discover, under such a surface of raw and imported matter, any forms of thought which the intellect can claim as purely and originally its own. Thus does a theory of sensualism naturally arise out of a taste for general reading, and we find accordingly that the great advocates of universal knowledge have been also the strenuous assertors of this system." See p. 254-7. To name Bacon, Boyle, Locke, Newton, Herschel, Whewell, after due consideration of this passage in its real, full meaning, might suffice. But it is difficult to imagine that such a style of disquisition would be indulged in, such conclusions assumed, in any other purpose than that which Locke complained of*as Stillingfleet's alike gratuitous and disingenuous mention of Hobbes and Spinoza. * "'tis with such candid and kind insinuations as these, that you bring in both Hobbes and Spinoza, into your discourse here about God's being able, if he please, to give some parcels of matter, ordered as he thinks fit, a faculty of thinking. Neither of those authors having, as appears by any passages you bring out of 'em, said anything to this question, nor having, as it seems, any other business here, but by their names skilfully to give that character to my book, with which you would recommend it to the world." 1st Letter to the Bishop of Worcester; on Essay, IV, iii, 6. And live the influences that are, of learning, the faculty of words has seldom failed where the things were well thought, and that the power and will to impart knowledge have existed in the highest authorities upon the question; though it may often be otherwise with those to whom reserve is more important; but of course the faculty varies in individuals, as well as the mastery; and each must speak for himself. Another curiously felicitous passage from Montaigne may be added: que "C'est grand cas que les choses en soyent là en nostre siecle, la philosophie soit jusques aux gens d'entendement, un nom vain et fantastique, qui se treuve de nul usage, et de nul prix par opinion et par effect. Je croy que ces ergotismes en sont cause, qui ont saisi ses avenues. On a grand tort de la peindre inaccessible aux enfants, et d'un visage renfroigné, sourcilleux 66 The language of Herschel may be compared with that of Mr. Vaughan: Nothing, then, can be more unfounded than the objection which has been taken, in limine, by persons, well meaning perhaps, certainly narrow-minded, against the study of natural philosophy, and indeed against all science,— that it fosters in its cultivators an undue and overweening self-conceit, leads them to doubt the immortality of the soul, and to scoff at revealed religion.* Its natural effect, we may confidently assert, on every well constituted mind is and must be the direct contrary . . . .―by cherishing as a vital principle an unbounded spirit of enquiry, and ardency of expectation, it unfetters the mind from prejudices of every kind, and leaves it open and free to every impression of a higher nature which it is susceptible of receiving, guarding only against enthusiasm and self-deception by a habit of strict investigation, but encouraging, rather than suppressing, everything that can offer a prospect or a hope beyond the present obscure and unsatisfactory state." etc. Preliminary Discourse, § 5. -"it ought to suffice to remark, on the one hand, that truth can never *And see Bacon, De Augm. Scient. III, iv, vol. VII, p. 198. |